


Playing a Role

by waltzmatildah



Category: Orphan Black (TV), Rookie Blue
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Double Agents, F/M, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Gail thinks he could tell her just about anything right now and it couldn’t possibly be as shocking as the sudden image she’s conjured of Allison Hendrix smoking a freaking joint.</i>
</p><p>Luke Callaghan is undercover... as Chad Norris. Warning: this is no where near as crackfic-y as it really should be!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing a Role

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petragem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petragem/gifts).



There’s a glass of wine, three quarters to empty now, discarded on the coffee table. Unopened mail, the new _Vampire Weekend_ CD, and her own lazily crossed ankles right there with it as she scrolls through the night’s happenings on Facebook and pretends, just for a moment, that she still knows the vaguely familiar faces that smile back at her.

Apparently Jess Wagner is in Prague.

Good for Jess Wagner.

(And who exactly is Jess Wagner again?)

She flips absently through semi-decent photographs of landmarks she recognises from the travel channel broken up occasionally by faces that she most definitely doesn’t. Gives herself seven precious seconds to try and imagine herself in their place.

Can’t.

The dreary boredom of a rare Saturday afternoon to herself is split in half then as her phone bursts to life in her hands; the sound of it, shocking in the otherwise silence. 

 

 

 

It’s half an hour later now and she’s tapping her fingers against the steering wheel of her car, waiting impatiently for the red light to blink over to green. Her phone is face up on the passenger seat and her gun is strapped securely in place at her side.

So much for a lazy afternoon off.

She takes the last turn a little too sharply and manages to clip the back tyre against the curb, gets barely a sideways glance from a kid on a bicycle as she watches him recede into the background via the rear-view mirror.

_Shit._

The safe-house is still three blocks away and she bounces the back of her head against the headrest in an attempt to _get a grip_.

 

 

 

The door opens cautiously at her knock, just a crack at first and with the chain still in place. One eye appears in the gap, blinking owlishly and bloodshot beyond belief.

“Jesus, Homicide, what the fuck?”

They’re well past the point of being polite to one another. 

Or maybe they never reached it in the first place. Too much time has passed by now and looking back has never really suited either of them, no matter how often they may fall for the trap.

The door closes again for a beat before opening fully, revealing a left eye to match the right, a grin that is equal parts sheepish and pissed off.

“I haven’t worked in Homicide for-”

“Two years, yes, I am aware of that.” 

(Speaking of traps…)

She shrugs as she pushes past him and into the hallway. It’s little more than a different version of the same argument they have on a daily basis. Their own small slice of homeostasis in a world that has shifted their centre of gravity so far to the left they can barely see it anymore.

“What the _hell_ happened to you?”

 

 

 

He’s halfway through a semi-formal attempt at a run-down of the events of the last twenty four hours when his resolve finally collapses.

“I think I’m still high,” he says, apropos of nothing.

“Excuse me?”

“I, ah, I kind of smoked a joint.”

“You ‘kind of smoked a joint’, what?”

“Gail.”

“How do you ‘kind of’ smoke a joint, Luke?”

She stands up and then sits down again.

Decides she prefers the higher ground and stands once more.

“Allison was-“

“Wait. Stop. Hang on. You smoked a joint with _Allison_?”

Gail thinks he could tell her just about anything right now and it couldn’t possibly be as shocking as the sudden image she’s conjured of Allison Hendrix smoking a freaking joint.

She also admits she’s probably missing the point. At least a little bit.

 

 

 

She makes them both coffees she’s not entirely convinced they’ll drink; thinks back forty five minutes to the bottle of wine in her fridge door and wishes with all her might that she’d had the forethought to bring it with her.

There really are some things that make a whole lot more sense with wine on board. 

Allison and Luke smoking a joint in a freaking _parking lot_ is definitely one of those things.

“Holy shit, Callaghan.” And that’s the best she’s got.

He has both hands wrapped around his mug, is at least attempting to make a show of downing some of the contents. She’s not even bothering to do that much.

“Does the Sarge know?”

He looks up at her through ridiculous lashes, the ones she likes to pretend she’s never noticed, and rolls his eyes at her.

“Right. Of course he knows.” She’s back to pacing now; stops short suddenly. “Does Olivier know?”

“No,” he says sharply, voice little more than a bark, “And the plan is to keep it that way.”

“Okay,” she nods, exhales shakily, “Okay, good.” 

And sometimes she’s more than a little envious that Luke gets to play double agent.

This is not one of those times.

“Did you at least get anything useful out of her?”

“Well, she’s definitely divorcing Donnie now,” he says, tone indecipherable, and she can’t help but think there’s more to that particular story than he’s telling her. Lets it go. 

For now.

 

 

 

“So, what’s next? Do we have an updated briefing?” 

The last twenty odd months have been so utterly mind-boggling that she’s getting used to having the goal-posts shifted at a moment’s notice. 

“Not yet.” He shakes his head as he speaks; sloshes coffee over the rim of his mug and onto his fingers but doesn’t seem to notice. “There’s a meeting set for Monday, oh eight hundred. I guess we’ll find out more then.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, Aynesley threw me out of the house.”

“ _Aynesley knows_?”

He looks at her again. The same patented stare, up and at her through those damn lashes. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t need to.

“Right,” she says, fills in the blanks for herself. “Smoking a joint wasn’t the only thing you did in the back of that SUV was it?”

 

 

 

She lies then, says she needs to pee and marches off up the hallway to the bathroom at the back of the house. She’s inexplicably jealous in a way that creeps up from her toe-tips; furious and fighting desperately to hide it. 

He’s been sleeping with that painful Aynesley woman for over a year now, all in the name of ‘the job’, and she’s knows they’ve basically been given an open book to do whatever needs to be done to keep certain targets in sight.

But still.

_But still…_

(Refuses to think about that time she had her bare knee pressed up tightly between Paul’s thighs, his lips, hot and heavy at the nape of her neck. 

It’s hardly the same thing after all.)

 

 

 

She flushes the toilet for no real reason beyond keeping up appearances, runs the tap and splashes water on her face; stares at herself in the mirror fiercely.

Laughs.

Suddenly and completely.

Is on her knees against the cold tile when the bathroom door pushes open cautiously.

“Gail?”

She’d answer him if she could. If she had air in her lungs for speaking. But she doesn’t and so she laughs some more.

Laughs until she’s choking and he’s pulling her to her feet and holding her face between his hands, still warm from his coffee mug, and rubbing his thumb along the length of her jaw.

“Gail.”

Whispered this time. And no longer questioning. A statement of fact.

He gets it. 

He gets _her_.

She’s beginning to think he’s the only person who does.

The only person _left_ who does.

 

 

 

She breaks free, reluctant but refusing to admit it, and sinks back to the floor. It feels safer like this somehow; safer to have those few feet and inches of space between them.

He sits with her this time, leans back against the tub and props his elbows on his knees awkwardly.

“I get it, you know?” he says, and she wonders for a beat if maybe she’d been speaking out loud after all, is relieved when he continues, “How impossible this all seems sometimes.”

She nods quickly, drags in a deep breath and attempts to hold it. A last ditch attempt to get her heaving lungs back under control.

Or, at least, some illusion of it.

“Do you regret it?” he asks, his blood-shot eyes at odds with the sincerity laced through his question. “Do you regret accepting the position and leaving fifteen for, well,” He looks around the room, gestures vaguely with both hands, “This?”

He doesn’t mean the bathroom they’re sitting in. He doesn’t even mean the safe-house. Twenty months plus of being each other’s only backup makes deciphering half-assed body language almost second nature.

She exhales slowly, banishes sudden memories of Andy and Oliver and Traci. Of Dov and Chris and… Nick. Is pleased when her shoulders still to something resembling normal. 

“No,” she says, firm and definite. “Not even for a second.”


End file.
